The Diplomat
Spain and Turkey will hold a bilateral summit, possibly before the end of the year, it was agreed yesterday in a meeting between Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan.
Sánchez met with Erdogan on the sidelines of the NATO summit that took place yesterday in Brussels, accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya.
On his Twitter account, the chief executive said that he had shared with Erdogan “the mutual desire to hold a Spain-Turkey summit as soon as possible, accompanied by a business forum”.
Government sources indicated that this could take place before the end of the year, as González had announced in January after a meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, in Madrid. The meeting should take place on Turkish soil, it was said at the time.
The government stressed yesterday that the volume of trade between the two countries has fallen during the pandemic, which is why the two presidents “share the desire for it to recover as soon as possible”, hence the holding of the summit and the business forum.
On the other hand, according to Moncloa, Erdogan took advantage of the meeting to reiterate his gratitude to Sánchez and the Spanish government for maintaining the Patriot missiles on Turkish soil, a mission to which they attach a high strategic value.
Similarly, Pedro Sánchez held an interview with the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, in which they expressed their concern over the migratory situation and forced displacements in Central America and Mexico. The two leaders, the Spanish government explained in a statement, emphasised in their meeting the “excellent bilateral relations” between their countries and shared their support for multilateralism on the international stage and universal access to vaccines.
Moncloa reported that Sánchez shared with Trudeau the Spanish initiative “Vaccines for all”, which proposes a series of measures to accelerate the distribution of vaccines and fight the current pandemic “without leaving anyone behind.
On the issue of migration, the communiqué recalls that Spain is chairing until this month the MIRPS Support Platform, the Regional Comprehensive Framework for Protection and Solutions to Forced Displacement in Central America and Mexico, and that Canada will hold this position as of next month.
